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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26774857">Degrees of Separation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett'>SegaBarrett</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Breaking Bad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:21:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,045</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26774857</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrea finds Donald. They both find Jesse.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andrea Cantillo/Jesse Pinkman, Jane Margolis/Jesse Pinkman (Mentioned)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Degrees of Separation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The website for Casa Tranquila listed it as, as well as one of the best nursing homes in the city of Albuquerque, one of the best teams for rehabilitation of traumatic brain injuries.<br/>And they were kicking the reputation that they’d gotten from the explosion incident. The staff just didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and most of the people working there now hadn’t been there when it had happened anyway. It had basically morphed into legend at this rate.</p><p>At least that was what Shaylyn told Andrea when she gave her a tour of the place.</p><p>“Trust me, it won’t happen again,” she assured her, “I’m not even sure how it happened the first time. I mean, bad luck I guess. It was such a shame, too. That old Hector was a really nice guy. Loved the parties and all of that. Anyway, here’s the rec room over here. Warning – a lot of people watch Murder She Wrote and all of that shit, so if you wanna watch something quality, your best bet is to set up Netflix in your room.”</p><p>Andrea slumped back against the wheelchair. What she wanted was to see Brock, to know that he was really okay. But all she had had were assurances that he was at home with her grandmother and she was taking care of him.</p><p>“Over here is fine,” Andrea said instead, getting wheeled over to the main area. The nurse walked away, and Andrea asked the bearded man next to her, “What’s this they’re watching?”</p><p>“Classic Concentration,” the man replied. “That’s Alex Trebek, over there, before you saw him on Jeopardy.”</p><p>Andrea leaned forward and watched as the woman on TV won a trip to Puerto Rico but thought to was to Puerto Vallarta. </p><p>“This woman has so not been to Mexico,” Andrea declared. “Gringos.”</p><p>***</p><p>Andrea sighed as she flipped through the pictures in her cell phone. It seemed like another her, like a lifetime ago. She wondered what that Andrea would think about who she was now, with her mind so foggy and her responses always seemingly so slow. It was like she was drifting all the time, and maybe she would never…</p><p>“Who’s that?” </p><p>She turned her head around to see the man from the lounge looking at her, looking at her cell phone.</p><p>“Oh… That’s Jesse. He’s… Well, he was, my boyfriend. We broke up.”</p><p>“He looks familiar,” Donald said, straining his eyes as he looked at the picture again. </p><p>“Well, now he’s wanted all over the news,” Andrea replied, “That’s probably where you know him from.” </p><p>“No… Before that.” Donald reached up and rubbed at his forehead. “The kid. He was my daughter’s… boyfriend, I guess you would say.”</p><p>Andrea craned her own head. </p><p>“I never head Jesse really speak about any of his exes. What… happened?”</p><p>“To Jane? She…” Donald swallowed and then looked back at her. “She died. She overdosed… was going to go to rehab, but I let her convince me she needed one more day. And that… was the last one.”</p><p>“And you’re sure it was Jesse she was dating?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t forget that face.”</p><p>“The face that what?” </p><p>Andrea didn’t want to know. But then she had to, didn’t she? She barely knew anything about Jesse, not really. She’d jumped into the relationship with him because he felt safe, and God, safe was something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Now, if she found out that Jesse had been using her all this time…</p><p>“The day that Jane died. I came to her house. His house, actually. It was a duplex. He was renting the other side.”</p><p>Andrea leaned in, not knowing, again, if she wanted to hear this or maybe just needed to.</p><p>“He was looking… shell-shocked. I don’t know really how I expected him to look. Maybe I expected him to look smug because… maybe that’s where I was putting the blame. Or for him to look like he didn’t feel anything at all. But he just looked… empty, I guess. He looked… see-through.”</p><p>Andrea nodded, slowly, letting a breath out.</p><p>“When I met Jesse… I could tell that… he had lost someone. I guess I just didn’t realize all the details. But now… I’m not sure Jesse was over her when we started dating. She sounds like… do you have a picture of her?”</p><p>Donald wheeled himself away, and for a few minutes, Andrea didn’t think that he was coming back at all. But he did – he returned with a small, framed photo of a smiling girl with long black hair holding a rose.</p><p>“Her high school graduation photo,” he said with a sigh. “She had already been to rehab before this was taken… But…. I never stopped loving her. I couldn’t.”</p><p>Andrea looked at him.</p><p>“Who would expect you to?”</p><p>***</p><p>It was a few days before Andrea got to talk to Donald again. Maybe she was grasping at straws, but being close to someone who knew Jesse, even briefly and in such a roundabout way, made her head feel screwed on that little bit more.</p><p>“Do you think they’ll find him?” Donald asked, after wheeling himself over next to Andrea. “Your boyfriend, I mean.”</p><p>“Depends on who you mean by ‘they’,” Andrea replied. She looked down. “Based on my luck, maybe they’ll find him in a ditch. I already lost my kid brother – it’s not like these people have any standards.”</p><p>“These people?” Donald asked.</p><p>“The people in the drug game. Jesse was… a dealer. I knew that much. He was mixed up with some bad people.” She gestured to her head. “Guess I was collateral.”</p><p>“And you still want to find him?” Donald asked. “Why not just cut your losses while you still might have a hope of walking away one of these days?”</p><p>“The same reason you didn’t just cut off Jane,” Andrea said with a shrug, “I’m in love with him. He’s important to me and my son.”</p><p>Donald sighed.</p><p>“I can’t really argue with that. But it seems like Jesse may be someone who’s… dangerous to know.”</p><p>“Anything in the world worth doing is dangerous,” Andrea replied. “And if you want to help me… Then you might be putting yourself in danger, too.”</p><p>Donald lifted up his arms and shrugged.</p><p>“Because I have so much to lose,” he said. </p><p>***</p><p>Weeks went by – dominos and watching football on the big TV in the main lounge and doing arts and crafts with safety scissors.</p><p>And then Andrea moved up – walked up, this time, slowly and carefully – to see the story on the news. </p><p>“Police are searching for Jesse Pinkman, associate of the elusive Walter White, also known as Heisenberg. He is wanted as a person of interest in a shooting that killed eight people outside of Albuquerque, in a secured compound. Evidence found on site indicated that Pinkman may have been being held captive at this location, but police stated that they want to speak to anyone who may know more. Pinkman contacted his parents but they stated that he did not show up where they agreed to meet, and no new leads have been found.”</p><p>“Oh my God,” Andrea whispered. “Jesse…”</p><p>“What happened?” Donald asked, wheeling up to Andrea’s side. She told him everything in a jumble, horrified and panicked.</p><p>“We have to find him. We have to save him,” Andrea said, dragging a hand down her face. “The people who hurt me… That had to be them. They had him there. In a cage. He must be so scared…”</p><p>“Okay, but let me stop you right there, Andrea,” Donald broke in, “We are two, uh, handicapped people or whatever we’re meant to be called now, in a nursing home. How are we supposed to find him if the FBI and the APD haven’t been able to track him down?”</p><p>“Because between the two of us, we know more than them. We know Jesse, and we know where he would be most likely to go.”</p><p>“And where’s that?” Donald asked. “I can’t say I have ever escaped from a Nazi compound, but I would probably try and go home first…” </p><p>“And if you can’t go home, you go where feels like home. The kind of place where, maybe, you would find your first lost love again.”</p><p>Donald raised an eyebrow.</p><p>“And,” Andrea continued, “This isn’t a prison. They’ll have to let you go there…”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>Andrea still hadn’t entirely believed it would work. She guessed that the people at Casa Tranquila felt bad for Donald Margolis – she certainly had when she’d seen his face on the news years ago, the grieving father who had blood on his hands only because he had cared and loved too much, loved to distraction. Andrea could remember her grandmother shaking her head, no doubt imagining what she would do in that position if it had been Andrea overdosing, not that anyone in Andrea’s family had ever been a high-flying air traffic controller.</p><p>It hadn’t even been that hard for them to agree to let Andrea come along. It wasn’t a prison, after all, it was just a hospital, and they had said they would be back and they would call as soon as they were done. Which might take a while – which, if this worked, might take more than a while.</p><p>Andrea took a slow step off the van, wheeling Donald along the bumpy grounds of the cemetery and looking this way and that. She didn’t like graveyards much, had placed too many family members in the ground over the years. </p><p>“It’s weird to think that if things had been different… her and me could’ve been friends. Instead we’re members of the weirdest club in the world,” Andrea said dryly. “I didn’t… tell you, but my brother died. Suddenly. He was… eleven and running drugs.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if it gets any easier. Do you feel like it does?”</p><p>“It does and it doesn’t,” Donald replied. “But maybe… Maybe this is the one thing we can do to fix it just a little. For all that Jesse did, he didn’t deserve that. I don’t think that anybody does.”</p><p>“His parents seem to differ.”</p><p>Donald didn’t reply, choosing instead to step forward and look at the granite gravestone in front of them. Jane Elizabeth Margolis, it read, 1981-2008. Beloved daughter. </p><p>“Kind of weird how people try and sum somebody up in a couple words. Just what they were to somebody else. Tomas is over in some Catholic cemetery out where we used to live. All the gravestones are in Spanish. Bunch of saint candles and… Despair, basically. Not the place the spirits hang on Dios de los Muertes, I’ll tell you that.” She paused. “He has to come here.”</p><p>“I wish I could be as sure as you,” Donald said, looking down and sighing. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who remembers her. With what happened later…”</p><p>Andrea reached over and took Donald’s hand. </p><p>“He’ll come here. I feel it. He never forgot, either.”</p><p>They stood there, looking at the tombstone, for longer than Andrea knew how to count. She wondered what Jane Margolis had wanted to do with her life, if she had had her choice. She certainly wouldn’t have chosen to join their twisted little club of addicts if she had known. </p><p>Andrea was about to turn and go when she heard the sound of someone moving on the path. </p><p>She turned, and she almost didn’t recognize him at first. His face was covered in scars, and he had grown his hair and beard long and unwieldy. He looked at least twenty years older, and his eyes were cast downward.</p><p>“Jesse,” Andrea whispered. He twitched, then turned to start to run. “It’s okay! It’s me. It’s Andrea. And, uh, Donald Margolis. We knew you would be here.”</p><p>Jesse stared at them, panicked but seemingly rooted to the spot. His eyes widened and he looked back and forth between Andrea and Donald.</p><p>“It’s you,” he whispered. “You’re alive. Both of you.” He ran over and wrapped his arms around Andrea, sobbing.</p><p>Donald’s eyes gazed over at the two.</p><p>“Let’s go home, kids,” he said.</p><p>“Where’s home?” Jesse whispered.</p><p>“I don’t know yet. But we’ll figure it out.”</p>
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